By Joe Mosby
Steven Fowler of Vilonia, quail program coordinator with the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and a caged bobwhite quail used in a research project. (Joe Mosby Photo)
Some fresh overtures toward resurrecting bobwhite quail in Arkansas may be forthcoming.
Quail Unlimited Inc., a national conservation organization that blossomed in the 1980s then fell quiet in later years, is undergoing an overhaul, according to its new president, Craig Alderman of Buffalo, Mo.
Alderman spoke to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Thursday at its monthly meeting in Little Rock. In was an introductory appearance by Alderman, and he made no grandiose promises. Rejuvenation of the organization was his focus.
QU was founded in 1981, one of three conservation organizations based in the small town of Edgefield, S.C. It was a neighbor of the National Wild Turkey Federation and the Striped Bass Association.
With the new efforts, QU has been involved in a variety of habitat projects in Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri. Now the group is looking at Arkansas, one of a number of states with rich quail history.
That is history – in the past. Arkansas still has quail but in drastically reduced numbers from the heydays of the early to mid-20th century. It may be hard to realize, but the hunting of quail in Arkansas once outranked deer hunting, outranked duck hunting, outranked turkey hunting.
Practitioners of quail hunting usually just spoke of “birds,” not quail. Birds meant quail to sportsmen and women. You didn’t need a further definition.
Quail thrived all over Arkansas but especially in farming country where coveys found food and shelter on the edges of fields, in fence rows and in grassy areas alongside ditches.
Hunting quail could be casual and could be formal.
Many communities had traditions of eagerly sought invitations “to hunt birds with Mr. Sam” or whoever the local bobwhite guru was. Quail dogs were nearly always pointers or setters, with pointers the more common. A natural spin-off was competitions to determine who had the best quail dogs. Field trials, they called this, and Arkansas developed a popular facility just south of Conway. It’s now called the Camp Robinson Special Use Area, an operation of the Game and Fish Commission on land obtained from the Army after World War II.
As enthusiastic as quail hunters were, they were overwhelmed by changing land uses. This meant “clean” farming – no more weedy tracts and grassy fence rows. Heavy applications of herbicides kept ditch banks clear. Somewhat debatable is the effect of incoming predators like coyotes. More recently, fire ants have moved through much of Arkansas.
A recent study concluded that quail numbers have declined an astounding 98 percent from totals of a few decades back.
The longing for quail to come back in Arkansas hasn’t gone away, although it is ebbed and flowed.
The AGFC partnered with Quail Unlimited on habitat work in the 1980s. This waned, then in more recent years, research projects were put together on some locations in northern Arkansas – Fulton and Searcy counties. In the past year, another project began in Faulkner, Conway and Van Buren counties with the town of Damascus near the center. This is a cooperative venture of AGFC and Southwestern Energy, a major player in the natural gas activity in north-central and west-central Arkansas. The AGFC has a wildlife biologist, Steven Fowler, as its statewide quail program coordinator.
Alderman said developing local chapters of Quail Unlimited in Arkansas is in the immediate future. Cooperative projects to improve habitat for quail is the focus. The chapters will have access to supplies of seeds like corn, sorghum, sunflower, wheat and legumes for wildlife plantings.
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On the Net:
Quail Unlimited — www.qu.org
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Joe Mosby is the retired news editor of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission and Arkansas’ best known outdoor writer. His work is distributed by the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. He can be reached by e-mail at jhmosby@cyberback.com.
